Bryan Preston relays his still vivid memory of the Challenger disaster. I remember it clearly, much like my mother remembers when she heard about Kennedy. For the record, I was in a tanning booth at the time.

Allow me to explain.

In 1986, my mother and I owned a small business, a combination ice cream shop and bakery. One of the other businesses in the strip mall was a tanning salon and she offered all of us merchants a deep, deep discount to use her place. I had been in an 8:00 a.m. class that morning and had a break until around 2-ish or so. A good friend of mine wanted to head to the tanning booth and I offered to drive, figuring that I could get a discount for her while taking advantage of a little radiation drenched snooze time. We got there, I put on the radio headphones, climbed into the tanning booth and drifted off. I was startled awake by the horrific news bulletin. I lay there for a few minutes more listening to the updates and then headed home to catch the news. It was a bad, bad day. As it happens, I vaguely remembered the Apollo mission where 3 astronauts died on the launch pad. I say vaguely because I was wee little child at the time. In any event, the Challenger disaster will stay with me until I lose what little wits I possess.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 01:46 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Andrea Harris performed her usual blog move on January 1. What with vacation and family obligations, I didn't notice until today. Once again, the blogroll has been updated to reflect this change. Please visit her at, once again, Twisted Spinster.

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Susie is celebrating "the anniversary of my 23rd birthday" . Stop by and wish her a big Happy Birthday.

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I'm on vacation in sunny St. Augustine, Florida, right now but I saw this comment over at Ace's place and couldn't resist posting it:

"Arguments from design don't even get off the ground. There have been many versions over the centuries, from St. Augustine to William Lane Craig, but they are self-refuting, and can be demolished with one simple but devastating question: who or what created this "intelligent designer"?"

You're kidding, right? I'm agnostic, and I think that's an idiotic response. Atheists aren't one iota less obligated to come up with one hell of an improbable First Cause than theists are.

Now back to the sun and beer, but probably just more beer.

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Bill Whittle has a new post up. No excerpts because I want you to read it all.

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